Home » Posts tagged "YA fiction" (Page 43)

Help a Reader Out: Home for the Holidays

Rachel writes:

Hi, I was wondering if you might know the name/author of a book. I only know a vague description of what it was about, but maybe you could help me, I’ve searched the internet far and wide and found nothing. The book probably came out between the 1980’s and 2000, short, about 100-180 pages, meant for kids ages 10-14. The premise is a boy and his stepsister come home from boarding school for the winter holidays, and find that things are strange in their house. The boys grandfather created a famous board game that is monster themed, the grandfather is dead now and a portrait of him hangs over the fireplace. So the boy and girl (probably ages 13-15) start to notices that their family members have become the creatures from the game, and the house is all spooky. So every night they plan to meet up and figure out what happened to their home. Eventually they figure out it has something to do with the portrait and the christmas lights. That is pretty much all the plot details I remember. Random other things I remember from the story is that the boy and girls room is connected with either a crawlspace/closet, the girls favorite color is mauve and the boy hates it, when the boys alarm goes off it’s always dogs barking christmas songs on the radio, and I believe the butler is a frankenstein, and the girls little brother is I think the werewolf. I don’t know if that helps, or if you can help me, but if you come up with something please let me know. Thanks a lot!!! Hope to hear from you soon -Rachel

The board game made me think of Jumanji, but that’s a picture book… the portrait over the fireplace reminds me of The Canterville Ghost, but I know that’s not it, either- it certainly doesn’t come from the 1980’s, and is problematic anyway. There are any number of books that have a boy and a girl coming home from school for the holidays, and haunted houses. I just can’t think of one book that has all of those details included!

Can anyone help Rachel out?

Posted on February 17, 2012 by , Reply

Angry Penguins, Anne Rice Returns, and Other Stuff.

Well, the drama from November, when Penguin pulled all their ebook titles from OverDrive (read: libraries) for dealing with Amazon, and then later decided it was okay for libraries to continue to check out ebooks they had already purchased but not new releases while they negotiated, has concluded for the moment, with Penguin choosing to stop releasing new ebooks to libraries at all and any Kindle versions to libraries at all. Instead of me summing it all up for you, I now present you with further reading: an article from Publishers Weekly that provides a basic summary, and some more information here. A bit of analysis shows that while this is extremely frustrating for librarians and library users,  it probably doesn’t do either Penguin or Overdrive much good, since it appears that now the only Big Six publisher making ebooks available to libraries is Random House, even though there is a huge demand for ebooks. So if you’re a small press publisher, willing to make it easy for libraries to work with you, this could be good news for you.

And a few tie ins to Women in Horror Month (kinda):

Anne Rice is back, this time with a werewolf book. Here’s an interview with her, published just a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal.

And this month Madeline L’ Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. You can argue that it’s science fiction or fantasy or both, and you’d be right, but it’s also terrifying. I liked this article that talked about how central women writers have been to the renaissance of science fiction and fantasy, especially for the young adult crowd. The author mentions extremely cool writers like Diana Wynne Jones, Susan Cooper, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Lois Lowry, all of whom came long before J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins ever hit the scene. Although it’s not addressed in the article, if you look at YA horror, I suspect you’ll find a number of women writers there too; Lois Duncan and V.C. Andrews were staples when I was growing up (although not as likely to be assigned reading in school). It’s interesting to note this, as these are frequently perceived as male-dominated genres… does that just happen when we grow up?

And Rose Fox, over at Genreville, notes that there are more starred horror titles (horror-ish, to use her exact wording) this year already than there were all last year. Woohoo!

 

Posted on February 13, 2012 by , Reply

Participate in the African-American Read-In With Zombie Michele Lee and MonsterLibrarian.com!

As you probably know, February is Black History Month in the United States. To honor that, MonsterLibrarian.com brings you a message from Zombie Michele Lee announcing a project she’ll be spearheading this month. We hope you’ll participate!

Hi, this is Zombie Michele with a special announcement. In honor of Black History Month I’ll be hosting Monster Librarian’s first (online) African American Read In and you are enthusiastically invited to join in!

 

How to join: February 6th, 7th & 8th join us online on Twitter ( we’ll be using the hashtag #MLAAReadIn), on Facebook or here at Musings of the Monster Librarian.

 

All you have to do is read a book (or two or a dozen) written by an African American writer (stay tuned for a list, if you don’t know where to start) and tell me on those sites, or email me at zombiemicheleATgmailDOTcom (with spam guards removed) what book you’re reading. We’d love to hear what you think of it as well, but all we require for reporting is which books were read.

 

I picked a three day scope so that you have plenty of time to join in. There is no minimum number of books you have to read. There is no genre you have to stick to (though being a speculative fiction site we’ll be focusing on science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery and romance authors). Read as little or as much as you like of what you like!

 

I’ll do all the heavy lifting (aka, filling out the reports to make this event official). You just have to read!

 

To help you out, Zombie Michele has hunted down some booklists of reading material you can use to get started below:

YA/Adult List from the event site- http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Involved/Action/AARI/Young_Adults_Adults.pdf

Young Children’s List from the event site- http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Involved/Action/AARI/Young_Children.pdf

A book list from the Cincinnati Library– http://www.cincinnatilibrary.org/booklists/?id=africanamericanwriters

 

And our own (not exhaustive) list of African American speculative fiction books. Many of these books are available digitally, so even if you’re a last minute joiner there’s no problem. Just download a book and jump in!

N.K. Jemisin

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy #1)

The Broken Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy #2)

The Kingdom of the Gods (Inheritance Trilogy #3)

 

David Anthony Durham

Acadia: The War with the Mein (Acadia #1)

The Other Lands (Acadia #2)

The Sacred Band (Acadia #3)

 

Octavia Butler

Parable of the Sower

Kindred

Fledgling

Dawn (Xenogenisis #1)

Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis #2)

Imago (Xenogenesis #3)

Lilith’s Brood

Parable of the Talents

Wild Seed

Seed to Harvest

Mind of My Mind

Clay’s Ark

Bloodchild and other Stories

Patternmaster

Survivor

 

Samuel R. Delany

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Babel-17

Tales of Neveryon

Dhalgren

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Trouble on Triton

Nova

The Einstein Intersection

Hogg: A Novel

Atlantis: Three Tales

Dark Reflections

Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories

Return to Neveryon

Flight from Neveryon

The Fall of the Towers

Distant Stars

The Jewels of Aptor

The Ballad of Beta 2

City of a Thousand Suns

The Mad Man

Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York

They Fly At Ciron

 

Steve Barnes

The Cestus Deception (Star Wars: Clone Wars novel)

Beowulf’s children

Great Sky Woman: A Novel

Dream Park

The Barsoom Project

Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Novel

Shadow Valley

Zulu Heart

Charisma

Lion’s Blood

Far Beyond the Stars (Star Trek Deep Space Nine)

Saturn’s Race

The Kundalini Equation

The Decent of the Anansi

Firedance

Assassin and other stories

Gorgon Child

Iron Shadows

 

Tananarive Due

My Soul to Take

The Good House

Blood Colony

My Soul to Keep

The Between

The Living Blood

Joplin’s Ghost

 

 

L.A. Banks

Shadow Walker (Neteru Academy)

Finders Keepers (Dark Avengers)

Loser’s Weepers (Dark Advengers)

Death’s Excellent Vacation (contributor)

My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (contributor)

Love at First Bite (contributor)

Minion (Vampire Huntress)

Stroke of Midnight

The Thirteenth (Vampire huntress)

Vegas Bites (contributor)

The Awakening (Vampire Huntress)

The Wicked (Vampire Huntress)

The Hunted (Vampire Huntress)

The Forsaken (Vampire huntress)

The Ancestors

Bad Blood (Crimson Moon #1)

Bite the Bullet (Crimson Moon #2)

Undead on Arrival (Crimson Moon #3)

Cursed to Death (Crimson Moon #4)

Never Cry Werewolf (Crimson Moon)

The Bitten (Vampire Huntress)

The Darkness (Vampire Huntress)

The Forbidden (Vampire Huntress)

The Cursed (Vampire Huntress)

The Damned (Vampire Huntress)

The Shadows (Vampire Huntress)

L.A. Banks’ Vampire Huntress: Dawn and Darkness

L.A. Banks’ Vampire Huntress: The Hidden Darkness

Creepin’

Minion

Voices from the Other Side: Dark Dreams II (Contributor)

 

Timothy N. Stelly, Sr

Human Trial

Human Trial II: Adam’s War

 

Brandon Massey

Covenant

Don’t Ever Tell

The Ancestors

The Other Brother

Vicious

Cornered

Thunderland

Dark Dreams (contributor)

Voices From the Other Side: Dark Dreams II (contributor)

Whispers in the Night: Dark Dreams III (contributor)

Within the Shadows

Dark Corner

Twisted Tales

 

L.R. Giles

The Darkness Kept

The Serpent and the Stallion

Live Again

Trick Shot (a short story)

Lover’s Spat (a short story)

The Track (a short story)

Doc Damage’s Very Bad Day (a short story)

Southern Hospitality (a short story)

Wilson’s Pawn & Loan (a short story)

Power and Purpose (a short story)

The Shadows Gallery

 

Walter Mosley

All I Did was Shoot My Man

When the Thrill is Gone

The Long Fall

Known to Evil

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Devil in a Blue Dress

Stories: All-New Tales

Killin Jihnny Fry

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

Little Scarlet

White Butterfly

Blonde Faith

Black Betty

Cinnamon Kiss

A Red Death

47

A Little Yellow Dog

Six Easy Pieces

Diablerie

The Man in My Basement

Fearless Jones

The Tempest Tales

Fear Itself

Fortunate Son

Bad Boy Brawly Brown

Walkin’ the Dog

R L’s Dream

Gone Fishin’

Blue Light

The Wave

Manhattan Karma

 

Charles Saunders

Imaro

Imora II: The Quest for Cush

The Trail of Buhu (Imaro III)

 

R.A. Baker

Rayna of Nightwind (Taren)

 

Nalo Hopkinson

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy

Midnight Robber

The Salt Roads

Brown Girl in the Ring

The New Moon’s Arms

Skin Folk

The Chaos

Mojo: Conjure Stories

Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction

 

Chesya Burke

Dark Faith (contributor)

Let’s Play White

Whispers in the Night: Dark Dreams III (contributor)

Voices From the Other Side: Dark Dreams II (contributor)

Dark Dreams (contributor)

 

Maurice Broaddus

Beauty Has Her Way

Dark Futures: Tales of Dystopian SF (contributor)

Dark Faith (editor)

Orgy of Souls

King Maker (Knights of Breton Court #1)

King’s Justice (Knights of Breton Court #2)

King’s War (Knights of Breton Court #3)

Apexology: Science Fiction and Fantasy (contributor)

Whispers in the Night: Dark Dreams III (contributor)

Harlan County Horrors (contributor)

Devil’s Marionette

 

Wrath James White

Succulent Prey

The Resurrectionist

Population Zero

The Book of a Thousand Sins

Yaccub’s Curse

 

John M. Faucette

Crown of Infinity

Siege of Earth

The Warriors of Terra

The Age of Ruin

 

Linda Addison

Animated Objects

Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes

Being Full of Light, Insubstantial

How to Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend

 

Kevin Grevioux

New Warriors (Marvel Comics)

ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction

Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

DevaShard: at first light

 

Andrea Hairston

Mindscape

Redwood and Wildfire

 

Nisi Shawl

 

Sheree Thomas

Anansi

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (editor)

Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (editor)

 

Nnedi Okorafor

Who Fears Death

Zahrah the Windseeker (YA)

The Shadow Speaker (YA)

Long Juju Man (YA)

Akata Witch (YA)

Iridessa and the Secret of the Never Mine (YA)

 

Seressia Glass

Vegas Bites (contributor)

Shadow Blade

Shadow Fall

Shadow Chase

Dream of Shadows

 

 

 

Posted on February 2, 2012 by , Reply
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